On the table
an empty bottle of Nova Scotia "Chablis";
tea cups clatter,
the pastry plate is filled
with squares and scotch cakes.
They will complete the feast
of fried smelts,
boiled potatoes,
pepper, salt, vinegar
and peas.
On each visit,
father and mother seem just a bit more weathered
but their "joie de vivre"
and their wit
are never diminished.
We talk about everything:
the price of a thousand board foot of lumber in 1960;
the songs mother and her sisters sang
when they used to skate together on the river;
the Saturday afternoon father "sold" two-hundred pound of codfish
for a bottle of wine-
the broker closing shop:
content with his day's purchases,
wouldn't give him the going rate of three cents a pound...
I love books.
They were always treasures.
And we talk about the stories mother used to read to me at bedtime.
Moments that light up in my mind;
taking me back to when we would sing "ABC" together...
My favourite was "The Three Little Pigs"!
Not the modern,
sanitized
version (where the two lazy pigs run to their brother's house
and the wolf leaves in a HUFF)
but, the cloth bound edition.
The real "Three Little Pigs":
where the "thatcher" and the "carpenter"
are each eaten in turn,
where the wolf slides down a brick chimney
into a cauldron of scalding water as payment for his infraction.
The blue ink drawing on the last page
illustrates the pragmatic piggy in a rocking chair with his pipe,
a heavy book in his lap
and a wolf skin rug spread out before the fire place.
"Remember when we were living in Hamilton?"
(hence, when I was hardly three years old)
"I recall one night you and Mom had some kind of argument-
and she locked herself in the bedroom crying..."
Their eyes met in sudden surprise,
a night fifty years ago awoke itself to life.
...with a coy smile; "do you remember what we were so upset about?"
"No. Only, that after you made up
you let me sit down between you
and we read "A Day at the Farm".
-the story edited successfully,
it makes me recall the saying;
a successful marriage is the partnership of two good forgivers.
Honorable mention
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